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This chapter is about how images of Romanian identity entered into battle with one another in the politicized world of Romanian culture and perpetuated a Romanian national ideology within an order claiming to be socialist. It is about the relations among those who created such images (different groups of intellectuals or, more broadly, producers of culture), and between them and the leadership of the Romanian Communist Party. These various groups wrote and talked about “the nation,” constructing it as a politically relevant field of discourse. Their words coexisted with words on other themes...

This chapter is about how images of Romanian identity entered into battle with one another in the politicized world of Romanian culture and perpetuated a Romanian national ideology within an order claiming to be socialist. It is about the relations among those who created such images (different groups of intellectuals or, more broadly, producers of culture), and between them and the leadership of the Romanian Communist Party. These various groups wrote and talked about “the nation,” constructing it as a politically relevant field of discourse. Their words coexisted with words on other themes and with a larger set of strategies that included subtle coercion and outright vio1ence. Together, these formed the system of “legitimation” or “consent” in Ceauescu's Romania, as well as the elements of its transformation.